Some people would have you say “You know better than I.” Similarly in Sweden it is argued that the base of the comparison shouldn’t be dative, because we have abolished that long ago, but should be nominative in analogy with a continued clause “… better than I know.”

However, people keep using dative, saying:

Du vet bättre än mig.

Thus the official languages of the kingdoms of Sweden and Great Britain (+N.I.) do comparisons with nominative case or “no case”, whereas the actual people in some places use dative. We may ask which tradition is the most solidly rooted in Germanic and Indoeuropean tradition, and answer the question by looking at a handful of examples from various more or less old European languages.

First goes Old English, represented by the Lindisfarne gospels and 17th century English from King James’ Version:

Here Gothic uses þau + accusative. It is hard to say whether this use of accusative is normal Gothic or if it simply preserved the construction with η + accusative that was used in the Greek version. For Greek uses either accusative or genitive in comparisons of this kind.

Next, let’s look at Old Norse. Terje Faarlund’s The Syntax of Old Norse (p 104) helps us with an example:

þykkir engum jafnmikit sem Njáli fóstra hans
nobody feels this as much as Njal, his foster father

Yes, it is dative. However perhaps a more relevant example using än:

at engi jarl væri meiri ok frægri en Sigurðr
that no earl was greater and more famous than Sigurd

Nominative!

I am not sure what the dative of ‘Jacob’ is in Old High German, but this looks nominative:

How about Latin?Quam can be used with most cases. If quam isn’t used, ablative is the normal case for comparison.

So we have a difference here between Gothic (dative) and Old English + Old Norse + German (nominative). It seems hard to escape the possibility that parts of present day Sweden and England have preserved Gothic practices where everyone else used nominative.

Are there any more Germanic languages that used cases other than nominative for comparison?

What is the best way of reading John’s gospel in Greek? From P66 of course. Even the spelling mistakes are divine, except when they aren’t.
I was considering the political risk in running a business within a certain formerly democratic state when my eyes fell on John 4:36-37 in this most ancient document …

The reaper receives payment and collects the fruit unto generations of life, so that the sower can rejoice like the reaper.
For in this, the word is genuine that: “A salty one there is who sows and another who reaps”.

The difference between P66 and other manuscripts is a λ — αλος ‘salty’ vs αλλος ‘another’. Now salt was used by the ancients, patriarchs and kings, to enter agreements. They would eat salt together. If we trust in laws and agreements we will be more likely to sow in the sense of investing, but not particularly likely to reap as Isaiah 65:21-22 hints.

But what if this is not about investment? Salt was used in Israel to flavour sacrifices. But a sacrifice wouldn’t rejoice would it? Perhaps it would if it weren’t sacrificed, like Isaac in Genesis chapter 22. Otherwise it’s surprisingly hard to find people on the street who rejoice because they haven’t been sacrificed recently. It is also a bit challenging to find an article about chanterelles which mentions how to sow them and not just how to eat them.

In a sense reaping and sowing are opposite actions. When it comes to wheat or chanterelles, sowing is more enriching for a third party. When it comes to human souls, reaping is so much more essential for the survival of mankind and mother earth, so if you are somewhat old and there is room in your heart, why not accept a disciple?

By the way, the usual text says: “There is one who sows and another who reaps.”

Somewhat off the topics of this blog, as most people in Sweden today are unable to find even a single newspaper that is independent of the parties that are represented in parliament, and as this situation has turned the state into a reality-averse bubble, here’s a selection of relatively independent media.

Comments to this article that mention or suggests news papers or media sites that receive grants from the state (Presstöd/Partistöd), that publish whole articles from the monopoly news agency or that are controlled within the so called Public Service [sicut] framework, will be removed as the topic is independent media. Comments that suggest news sites that might really be independent are most welcome, as are corrections.

Click for full size.
Papyrus fragments are typically dated paleographically to a span of 50 years, so their location within this chart should be understood as very approximate. A few mss were left out, either because they contain very few words or because, as is the case with P98 of Revelation chapter 1, they are unusually difficult to date.

Don’t worry! I won’t post pictures of mine. Perhaps because I don’t have any, or perhaps because I care about my readers.

A few brief reflections however …

If you are a woman and want to know if a man likes children or not, ask him! Don’t ask another man “Does X like children?”, or actually, you can ask that question but ask the man himself too, then you’ll find out if the first guy is a liar. If another man says X doesn’t like children, there’s still 90 % chance that he does — at least his own.

In Yorkshire barn is a dialectal word for children. In Sweden barn is the word in standard language. In Gothic it’s barn. In Syriac it’s yalud (infant) or taly. However son is barܒܪ . Coincidence?

Skäggebarn is a new word in Swedish. It is made up of two pieces — skägg = beard, barn = barn. And then there is the connecting vowel. Swedish doesn’t use as many connecting vowels as Danish and Scanian so the form skäggbarn could have been expected, and indeed it occurs but rarelyperhaps even more often than skäggebarn (corrected based on feedback from a reader).

A skäggebarn is a man aged above 18, who travels to a foreign country (such as Sweden) and upon asylum claims that he has lost his ID-card and that he is x years old, where x << 18. This simple deception has been well known for at least five years and it is not clear why the migration authority insisted on getting fooled in the face of criticism. Today, they have been ordered by the government to switch to a restrictive extreme, as if a car driver who has been in the left roadside ditch could make up for her mistake by slipping into the right one as well.

I found it curious that /e/ was used for connecting vowel here. Some investigation revealed that the forms with /e/ were mostly used by people from central Sweden. Scanians used /a/ at least as often. The connecting vowels are not completely understood. I suggest /a/ is partitive and /e/ is locative or instrumental. Lucazin1 suggest it is genitive and should be /a/ for masculine and neuter nouns, and /e/ for most feminine except some old irregular ones. In this case our rules agree and it should be skäggabarn in Scanian.

Why did the lorry flash its high beams?
When a lorry passes another, it is usually hard for the passing driver to know when the rear end of his trailer has passed and it is safe to move back to the right lane. The one who gets passed will therefore often flash the high beams as a signal indicating when it is time to change lanes.

Other resons may include: salute a friend, signal to an oncoming to switch to low beams, mistake when fumbling for another control and a signal that something is wrong with the vehicle ahead.

A table which compares the phones of Bornholmsk (Espersen 1908 & Prince 1924) with those in mainland Scanian (from the north-western area according to Lucazin 2010).

Phoneme

Bh IPA

Scy. IPA

words so pronounced

/a/

[a]

[ɑ] or [a]

land (country/land), kat (cat)

/ā/

[aː]

[aː] or [ɑː]

fara (travel), kar (man/chap)

/ɑ̄/

[ɑʊ]1

[aʊ̭], [ɑʊ̭] or [ɑː]

dag (day), klar (clear)

/e/

[e]

[ɛ]

fett (fat/grease)

/ē/ or /ei/

[eː]

[eː]2

ner (down), reza (journey v.)

/ai/

[æi]

[ai]

Scy. fail/Sv. fel (failure/wrong)

/ī/

[iː]

[ei]3

kniʋ (knife)

/i/

[i]

[i] or [ei̭]

brink (brink), sil (herring)

/o/

no info

[ʊ] or [eʊ̭]4

ondra (lower), gold (gold)

/ō/

“English oh“

[eʊ]

sol (sun)

/ū/

[ʉː]??

[øʉ]

skruʋa (screw)

/ȳ/

[yː]

[øʏ]

sky (sky), myra (ant)

/ǣ/

[əe]

[ai] or [ɛː]

knæ (knee)

/ø̄/

“i in bird“

[øː]5

rød (red), bøste (loin/flank/ham)

/ɔ̄/

[eʊ]

—

nål (needle), see ō

/b/

[b]

[b]

bæra (carry), flab (mouth)

/d/

[d]

[d]

dra (drag/pull)

/f/

[f]

[f]

fæ (cattle)

/h/

[h]

[h]

—

/j/

[j]

[ɪ̭]

jord (earth)

/l/

[l]

[l]

luka (weed v.)

/m/

[m]

[m]

—

/p/

[p]

[p]

—

/t/

[t]

[t]

—

/g/ and /j/

[g] and [j]

[g] and [ɪ]

—

/z/

[z]

[s]

snaka (talk)

/s/

[s]

[s]

Bh. sten/Scy. stain (stone)

/r/

[r]

[ʁ]

—

/k/ and /ɕ/

[k], [t͡ɕ] and [ɕ]

[k], [t͡ɕ] and [ɕ]

—

/n/, /ɲ/ and /ŋ/

[n], [ɲ] and [ŋ]

[n] and [ŋ]

springa (chink/slit)

/ʋ/

[ʋ]

[ʋ]

kiʋa (row/quarrel v.)

1 Since the sources predate IPA, Prince doesn’t mention it and it doesn’t exist in Danish, my sources really don’t say what it sounds like, but [ɑʊ] is likely.

2 [eː] I am pretty confident that this sound isn’t a common realization of /ē/ in NW Scania, since I grew up in NW Scania and I can pronounce it in speech only with very much difficulty. [ei̭] possible.

3 actually [ei̭ː] is the notation in Lucazin p. 27. Certainly, in the NW, the i is pronounced longer than the e.

For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. — Matthew 13:12, ESV.

A friend brought up this verse recently and said it has been abused and interpreted to mean that it would be fair to redistribute resources from persons who have less to those who have more. Is Christ the Anti-Robin-Hood? Such an interpretation should be rejected, of course, with ease by any Christian, but a few questions remain:Continue reading →

Let’s look at this very used and useful Gothic word. Its meaning is pretty clear. From corresponding words in Latin and Sanskrit, we get the meaning to turn, and in analogy with the English word, wairþan is used in expressions like “turn into X”. It is still used in many Germanic languages in one form or another. For example Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok mentioned that the Scanian expression ʋuren (how something turns out relative to expectations) is a form of the perfect participle.

Another example of this use is the fixed expression warþ þan which is very useful for story telling. It occurs 15 times in the gospels:

Ref

W&H

R&P

SyP

Sinaitic palimp.

Matthew 7:28

και εγενετο

και εγενετο

ܘܗܘܐ ܕܟܕ

ܘܟܕ

Luke 1:8

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܗܘܐ ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

ܗܘܐ ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

Luke 1:11

omit

omit

omit

omit

Luke 2:1

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

ܘܗܘܐ

Luke 2:6

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܘܗܘܐ ܕܟܕ

ܘܟܕ

Luke 3:21

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

ܘܟܕ

Luke 6:6

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

non ext.

Luke 8:22

εγενετο δε

και εγενετο

ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

ܘܗܘܐ

Luke 8:40

εν δε

εγενετο δε

omit

ܘܟܕ

Luke 9:37

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܘܗܘܐ

ܘܟܗܘ

Luke 9:51

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܘܗܘܐ ܕܟܕ

ܘܟܕ

Luke 9:57

και

εγενετο δε

ܘܟܕ

ܘܟܕ

Luke 16:22

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

ܘܗܘܐ

Luke 18:35

εγενετο δε

εγενετο δε

ܘܟܕ

ܘܟܕ

(John 10:22)

εγενετο τοτε

εγενετο δε

ܗܘܐ ܕܝܢ

ܘܗܘܐ ܗܘܐ

The table shows the text of Wescott&Hort’s Alexandrian Greek edition, Robinson & Pierpont’s Byzantine Greek edition, the Eastern Classical Syriac Peshitta and the Old Classical Syriac Sinaitic Palimpsest respectively, in the places where the Gothic version has warþ þan.